Comms Dealer

Union Street Technologies has achieved Gold Partner competency in Microsoft's partner network for Application Development and Intelligent Systems, adding to its existing Gold Partner status for Data Platform competency.

Examples of Union Street's work with Microsoft products can be found in the integration of aBILLity with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, and in the development of a new, soon to be launched, hosted environment for aBILLity which, Union Street says, has been built from the ground up using Microsoft's Azure cloud platform as its foundation.

This new hosted environment has been designed by Union Street to deliver greater elasticity in resources and the highest levels of data security.

Tony Cook, Managing Director of Union Street, commented: "Gaining these accreditations from Microsoft clearly demonstrates the expertise we have in the development of software applications as well as database design and management.

"This expertise is crucial to developing our aBILLity billing platform which heavily utilises Microsoft technology and has enabled us to harness the power of Microsoft solutions to deliver additional resiliency and enhanced cloud based solutions."

Virtual1 has thrown its support behind Restless Development, an international development charity that aims to empower young people across the world who might otherwise be caught in a spiral of unemployment, poverty, lack of education and poor access to health services.

Restless Development currently works in eight countries in Africa and South Asia, where they listen to the young people of poor communities and train volunteers from these communities in a range of skills that can benefit their own communities.

Using young volunteers to provide the training, who can relate to the community volunteers, they help them to find the answers to the problems facing their communities. There is no right or wrong solution, as each community faces it's own set of problems.

Tom O'Hagan, CEO of Virtual1, said: "As a young company that has faced the challenges of entering a tough market, we understand this approach to a bespoke and non-packaged charity solution. By listening to the individual, and often unique needs of each community, the young charity workers can help the local volunteers to tackle their community problems in a unique way."

The partnership is for an initial three-year period and as part of the arrangement Virtual1 staff will be encouraged to take in various fund raising activities. The first of which has been the £1 challenge, whereby employees survived on just £1 per day for all their food and drink intake, for 5 days. Further activities include a Euro sweepstake, softball challenge, pub quiz with Partners and Carriers.

O'Hagan added: "I have a great team and whenever I've set them a challenge, particularly one that involves charity, they throw themselves into it wholeheartedly. I'm sure they will achieve the £20,000 target we have set for the initial years fundraising target."

Independent lender Henry Howard Finance has increased its credit facility with the Hampshire Trust Bank from £5m to £8m.

The larger block discounting facility will allow Newport-based Henry Howard Finance to extend its lending to a larger portfolio of SMEs across the UK.

Through its block discounting division, Hampshire Trust Bank offers funding direct to independent finance houses that want to use their loan book as security to fund the development of their business.

Howard Ross, CEO of Henry Howard Finance, said: "The extra funding will allow us to increase our lending to SMEs, supporting faster and more sustainable business growth and development."

This news follows soon after Henry Howard Finance announced it had agreed a £51m asset finance facility with the British Business Bank.

The facility, which is 50% guaranteed by the European Investment Fund, will also boost Henry Howard Finance's lending to UK businesses.

Capita has acquired Trustmarque Solutions, part of the Liberata Group, from parent company Ardbid for£57m. In its last financial year to 31st December 2015 Trustmarque reported revenue of £191.9m, net revenue of £107m, underlying EBITDA of £7.3m and underlying operating profit of £4.3m. Post-acquisition, with benefits from cross selling, cost savings and market growth, Trustmarque is expected to achieve Capita's target post-tax return on investment of 15% in 2018.

Trustmarque's core business is software resale, licensing and technology services. Key specialities include software asset management and strategic cloud consultancy.

Other service offers include business intelligence, workforce productivity and resourcing.

The company serves over 1,450 private and public sector clients and employs 620 employees based in five offices in York, Coventry, Sheffield, Edinburgh and London.

Trustmarque has a notable public sector presence in the NHS and in the private sector in accounting and legal services.

It is Microsoft's most accredited UK partner, holding 14 Gold Partner competencies, and is the largest Microsoft public sector licensing specialist in the UK providing over £100m of licenses each year.

It is also a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider.

The business is targeting strong growth in strategic cloud consultancy and has identified a £5bn addressable UK market for its cloud services, including MS O365 and MS Azure.

Capita has worked with Trustmarque for many years, as the company was the embedded software fulfilment partner within Capita Technology Solutions, Capita's technology reseller and service integration business.

Andy Parker, Capita's Chief Executive, said: "This acquisition provides Capita with a set of capabilities and expertise that complement its existing businesses, and the mix of core reseller activity and higher value services is a strong proposition that will sit well with its wider technology offering.

"Trustmarque's 'Enterprise-as-a-Service' model will provide a number of opportunities to build new services and deepen our existing relationships with key partners, in particular with Microsoft.

"It will particularly enhance our growing Capita Technology Solutions business, expanding its ability to offer innovative services to current and potential clients. Specific specialities, such as software asset management and strategic cloud consultancy, have strong synergies with Capita's existing propositions."

Scott Haddow, Trustmarque's Chief Executive, added: "We are now well positioned for strong organic growth, supported by Capita's expertise, experience and scale.

"There are a number of opportunities for integration - including our success selling services through G-Cloud - that will help us to lower costs and cross sell services to customers.

"Capita's long history with Trustmarque means that the two businesses understand each other well."

The Office of National Statistics revealed today that at 1.67 million the unemployment rate is at its lowest point since 2005.

This coincides with the largest employed workforce the country has ever had at 75.5% of the economically active population.
 
"With over 31 million people in work, including 1.8 million EU nationals, this success story is the envy of most of the world's developed economies," Said Clive Jefferys of recruiter JMA Network.
 
"There is never any room for complacency, as surveys also indicate employers are cooling their recruitment plans during BREXIT uncertainty.

"However, the skills crisis actually makes this factor unimportant as the market is fully led by candidate availability at this time,
 
"A period of economic slowdown would produce an uplift in people available for hire who would rapidly regain employment. These are strange times in recruitment!"

Dabs.com founder David Atherton has joined Entatech UK as Chairman.

Dabs.com was one of the earliest online retailers of IT equipment growing from scratch to over £200m revenue per annum.

Atherton sold the business to BT in 2006 and has since worked as an angel investor and as a partner in an accountancy firm.

Entatech UK MD Dave Stevinson commented: "I have known Dave for many years and have always been impressed with the manner in which he works. His track record speaks for itself. He is the right man to strengthen our leadership team and I cannot wait to start working together again."

Atherton added: "After several years out of the game I am delighted to return, especially to work with Dave Stevinson who I have known for over 25 years.

"Despite a changing technology world, best management, service and delivery principles remain constant, and this is a market I know well and I'm hoping to add value to the Entagroup."

KCOM saw a 50% increase in new faces at its annual Fastest 4 event held at Palmer Sport in Bedford where The Stig put 24 of the channel's fastest sellers through their paces.

As well as hosting the day, The STIG spent one-on-one time with partners sharing stories from his days at Top Gear and as a James Bond stunt driver, giving each racer a thrill ride with him at the wheel in the Le Mans JP-LM Palmer Jaguar at top speeds.

The STIG said: "It was as fun as ever putting KCOM's guests through their paces and everybody lived up to the high speed challenge. There were plenty of smiles and white knuckles from my passengers."

Henry West, Head of Channel Sales at KCOM, said: "It's great for the team to spend time with new partners and learn how we can serve them better, and to see many familiar channel faces at this event."

GCI Network Solutions is to acquire the entire business and assets of Outsourcery Hosting following the appointment of EY as administrators. Outsourcery suspended trading on AIM earlier this month stating it is no longer able to present its results for 2015 by the deadline of the end of June.

In April the company, which was co-founded by former Dragon's Den star Piers Linney, warned it needed short-term working capital, and it was investigating alternatives to raise money, including a fundraising, restructuring and the sale of non-core assets.

Later that month, Outsourcery reached an agreement with its principal secured lender, mobile giant Vodafone Group, for the terms of a new conditional drawdown working capital facility to provide it with funding while it realised its assets.

Outsourcery said Friday it has progressed with restructuring, including talks with third parties about the sale of business assets. It said it continues to carefully evaluate the approaches for the assets, as well as other options to strengthen its immediate and long-term financial position.

It said that the talks have had 'no material adverse impact' on its current business activity, as it has secured new contracts and continued with further project development.

In May 2013  Linney floated his tech firm on AIM with a market capitalisation of £34.6m, but the company's market value has since slumped.

Sam Woodward, Joint Administrator and Restructuring Partner at EY, said: "Over a number of years Outsourcery had invested significantly in its IT infrastructure and cost base in anticipation of strong revenue growth from its O-Cloud platform. In practice, the pace of revenue growth was below expectations resulting in Outsourcery suffering trading losses and cash flow pressure. 

"The Board was unable to secure additional working capital funding and as such, commenced a process to identify potential buyers for the business.

"I am pleased to report that following that marketing process, we were able to secure a sale of the majority of the Outsourcery business to GCI Network Solutions immediately following administration, which presents an excellent outcome for the business, preserves approximately 100 jobs and provides continuity of service for its customers.\" 

GCI CEO Adrian Thirkill stated: "Outsourcery has some great underlying characteristics, some talented people, a strong Skype for Business capability, an impressive customer base, some well-engineered platforms and lots of potential. We see this as a nice fit for GCI.\"

Thirkill emphasised that the deal is not a capability purchase. "We already have considerable expertise in the cloud and UC space, including tens of thousands of Skype for Business seats deployed across the UK and Europe via our direct and indirect sales channels," he explained. 

"The acquisition builds upon an already strong foundation and raises our profile in a market reported to be growing at five times the rate of traditional voice services. Most importantly, this acquisition also provides assured continuity of service for all of Outsourcery’s customers, resellers and partners.\"

GCI is a Vodafone Platinum Partner (through its London-based Commsxchange operation) a Microsoft Gold Partner and a Virgin Media Business Strategic Partner. "This is a capable blend which positions GCI nicely in the ascending UC market,\" Thirkill added.

Wayne Martin, GCI’s founder and Chairman, stated: "This is another well-considered step in GCI’s journey, a journey that started more than 15 years ago and now sees GCI with a nationwide presence from London to Glasgow, a joined up portfolio of fully managed IT services, and customers across multiple sectors, from small businesses to 700 site organisations.

"GCI’s raison d’etre has always been about building an integrated, disciplined and tech savvy organisation able to take customers on a consultative transformational journey. 

"Traditional voice just isn’t cutting it any more, UC is the new kid on the block. The benefits in terms of productivity gains, collaboration enhancements and the avoidance of time and cost routinely frittered away on trains, planes and automobiles is a message that’s really starting to hit home. The acquisition primes us perfectly to be a leading player in the UC space.\"

GCI's Chief Strategy Officer Scott Riley will oversee the Outsourcery operation and its integration. He noted: "This acquisition, when combined with our own Microsoft Centre of Excellence, gives us the ability to accelerate our penetration of a market forecast for double digit growth through to 2020. That is an exciting prospect.\" 

MSPs in Europe generated revenues of circa 350bn euros last year but with just 36.5% of them offering telecoms and 13% delivering managed print services these two important market segments offer the potential for significantly more growth.

The managed services market in Europe is fast-moving with profitability linked to scale and M&A activity on the up, according to a new database report by Comms Dealer sister company IT Europa that sampled the market across 34 European countries.

The 'Managed Service Providers in Europe - the Top 1,000' research report states that the overall market grew 8.5%, with smaller markets registering the fastest growth (Bulgaria 33%, Slovakia 21%, Turkey 18%).

Russia and Norway both grew 14%. France, Netherlands and Germany recorded expansion of just over 10%, while the UK achieved 7% growth. Spain showed a decline.
IT Europa's analysis also separated out a geographically diverse top 20 MSP league table based on the best growth performers.

The study also segmented the main growth markets addressed by MSPs: 86.5% offer network and infrastructure management; 72.4% server and web management; 71.9% provide security management; 61.2% deliver storage and back-up management; 60.5% provide SaaS solutions and just over 50% offer applications management.

"We are seeing more and more traditional channel organisations embrace managed services as a delivery model as customer demand continues to rise," stated Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa.

"The factors behind the surge in demand, the changes in customer buying behaviour driving them and the opportunities this presents for MSPs will be a major subject for debate at the Managed Services & Hosting Summit 2016 which takes place in London in September."?www.mshsummit.com?www.iteuropa.com

James Flitton, Vice President Service Delivery at Level 3 Communications, has joined The Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) Board of Directors. 

The ITP is governed by the Board of ITP UK which is made up of experienced industry professionals who have held senior management roles. 

Board members are appointed by the general membership during the Annual General Meeting.

Lucy Woods, Chairman of the ITP, said: "Together, our board is responsible for running the business on behalf of our members.

"James brings with him a wealth of knowledge from his extensive telecoms background and we look forward to his input and guidance driving the ITP forward."